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Kimberly Williams is CEO of Absorb Software, where she helps over 3,000 organizations deliver smarter learning experiences to 34 million employees. She brings decades of leadership in enterprise tech and now sits at the center of how AI is changing the way people grow at work. In this episode, Kimberly shares how learning becomes more powerful when it’s personalized, embedded in daily workflows, and led by curious teams who treat culture as a competitive advantage.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• How AI is shifting corporate learning from generic training programs to personalized, in-the-flow development tailored to each employee’s needs.
• Why in-context learning matters more than traditional courses, and how AI coaching inside tools like Slack, Salesforce, or ServiceNow changes how people actually learn at work.
• What it means to turn L&D teams into AI model trainers who encode company culture, values, and knowledge into coaching experiences.
• How Absorb Software tracks AI usage across teams and uses dashboards and leaderboards to drive internal adoption.
• The role of outcome data in modern learning systems, and how tying learning directly to performance metrics changes what training gets delivered.
• The advice Kimberly gives early-career talent, especially women, about finding roles where their contributions are measurable and their growth is supported by culture, not just credentials.

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Kimberly on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• On how Robert Plotkin addresses LLM regulation and legal advice for entrepreneurs
• Other episodes mentioned on the show:
  • AI as a Liberating Technology: Josh Bersin on Turning Routine Tasks into Superworkers Driving Trust, Creativity, and Growth
  • Dr. John Boudreau, future of work pioneer and former Cornell professor, discusses the new definition of work

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Henrik Werdelin is a founder and investor who has spent more than a decade building companies at the intersection of culture, technology, and consumer behavior. He co-founded BARK, the public company that redefined how millions of dog parents connect with their pets, and Prehype, the startup studio behind brands like Ro and Audos.

In this episode, Henrik explores how founders can embrace AI without losing human connection, drawing from his experience as co-host of Beyond the Prompt and co-author of Me, My Customer and AI.

Recognized by Fast Company and Business Insider for his creative impact, Henrik shares a practical perspective on building companies that scale while staying deeply human.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Henrik believes founders must stay close to users and how AI can deepen (not dilute) human connection.
• What “building companies at the edge of culture” means and why authenticity beats scale when designing for trust.
• How Henrik and his team use AI to speed up product development without compromising on creativity or purpose.
• The shift from storytelling to “storylistening” and how paying attention to customer behavior shapes better products.
• What the best founders get wrong about generative AI and why Henrik advocates for a more mindful approach to adoption.
• How roles inside companies are evolving in response to AI and what leaders can do to support creative experimentation.

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Henrik on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• How to Use Generative AI to Get Ahead In Your Career

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Faraj Aalaei is the Founder and CEO of Cognichip, an AI company building the world’s first Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI) platform to design semiconductors using AI. He brings four decades of experience in communications and networking, having led two companies (Centillium and Aquantia)through IPOs. Aquantia was later acquired by Marvell, where he also held an executive role. 

Prior to that, Faraj was Co-Founder and CEO of Centillium, which went public on NASDAQ just three years after its founding, the fastest IPO ever for a semiconductor company. 

He holds an honorary Doctor of Engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology, where he also earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, along with an MSEE from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire.

In this conversation we discussed:

• Why chip development cycles are trailing AI applications by years and how that disconnect leads to inefficient infrastructure and higher energy costs
• How AI could help democratize chip design by enabling smaller teams outside traditional hubs to build customized, application-specific hardware
• What Faraj sees as the real barrier to innovation: the time and cost of chip development, and how Cognichip is reducing both through compute-led design
• How AI can augment, not replace, engineers by offering transparent, explainable design suggestions while keeping humans in the loop
• The coming talent shortage in semiconductor engineering and how AI might close the skills gap and unlock new opportunities for nontraditional builders
• Why every major technological shift creates more opportunity than it destroys, and how Faraj sees AI enabling people to work on more meaningful problems

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Faraj on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• On How To Drive Compelling Narratives in Youtube Videos.

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Steve Truitt is an award-winning science fiction author, actor, producer, and musician. He received the prestigious Golden Eagle Award for his documentary series on Discovery. Steve's a space enthusiast and NASA history buff. He holds the unique record of having met five moonwalkers. Beyond his creative endeavors, Steve is also a coach and motivational speaker, recognized for his impactful work with the Best Motivational Book of the Year award for "Stop Waiting for Permission". Steve brings a wealth of experience and insight to discussions on AI and the future of work.

In this conversation, we discuss 

• How Steve got started in media and entertainment before branching out to other industries
• Industries being most impacted by AI
• The tricky ethics of AI and how to harness it as a tool that does more good than harm
• Why humanity is so fickle and prone to conflict 
• How leaders can stop the spread of misinformation with AI and what prevents them from doing so 
• Much more

Resources

Get Steve’s book, Mindset Chronicles

Additional episode you’ll enjoy 

AI fun fact 

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Chris Herringshaw is the Chief Technology Officer at Janus Henderson Investors, overseeing all technology aspects and serving on the Executive Committee. With over 15 years at Citadel Investment Group, he led Global Infrastructure Technology as Managing Director. Chris founded Quova, now part of NuStar, and held roles including Vice President of Engineering and CTO. He holds a BS in computer systems engineering from the University of Michigan, and actively contributes to shaping technology's future through advisory roles and industry forums. 

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Venturing from entrepreneur to an established company.
• Chris Herringshaw's background in technology, including his experience at Janus Henderson Investors and as a CTO at venture-backed startups.
• How FinTech companies leverage the power of AI while mitigating risks associated with its unpredictable nature.
• Why human decision making still trumps AI and algorithmic based trading decisions in certain contexts.
• Predictions on where AI is headed in the next 12 months.
• The role of AI governance in ensuring the responsible and effective use of artificial intelligence.

Resource

Previous episode about an AI app platform that’s growing faster than OpenAI 

Learn more about Janus Henderson 

AI fun fact article

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Dmitry Shapiro  is a serial entrepreneur who most recently founded and is the CEO of YouAi and the popular AI app-builder MindStudio. He has a bold vision to help you index your mind which we unpack in today's conversation. Previously, Dmitry founded and led GoMeta and  created the video sharing site Veoh in 2005 which  launched a few months after YouTube. Dmitry served as the CTO at MySpace before moving on to Google where was a Group Product Manager working on social graph, identity, and content discovery. Dmitry received his BS in EE from Georgia Tech.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The New York Times versus OpenAI and Microsoft copyright lawsuit and its implications for AI.
• The challenges and stakes for publishers when facing AI applications using copyrighted material.
• Dmitry Shapiro's entrepreneurial journey and the vision behind MindStudio.
• The impact of generative AI on computing and its potential for revolutionizing work and home environments.
• Legal and ethical considerations surrounding AI, copyright, and fair use.
• The intersection of technology, venture capital, and innovation in shaping the future of AI applications.

Additional resources 

• Another episode to enjoy 
• Fun fact article 

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As the Chief Product Officer at Alteryx, Suresh leads the product, engineering, design, and development teams that deliver innovative and scalable solutions for data science and analytics. He is also responsible for product pricing, packaging, and PLG strategies. Over the past 3 years, Alteryx has transformed into an analytics platform with market-leading end-to-end analytics solutions, covering the entire gamut of users from analysts to data engineers, developers, and data scientists.

With over 20 years of experience in the SaaS industry, Suresh has a proven track record of driving growth, customer satisfaction, and market leadership for cloud-based platforms and products.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The ongoing debate between AI guardrails and user autonomy, referencing Mark Gimein's "spicy mayo problem" as a case study.
• Suresh Vittal's background, journey through analytics and AI, and his role as Chief Product Officer at Alteryx.
• Alteryx's mission of "analytics for all" and their focus on empowering users across technical and non-technical roles in data analytics.
• The integration of generative AI features into Alteryx's platform to simplify complex workflows and enhance collaboration among data professionals.
• Insights into AI-first data management strategies and the evolving landscape of AI-driven tools in the future of work.
• The importance of governance and transparency in AI-powered analytics, ensuring clarity and understanding across complex data workflows for improved decision-making.

Additional resources: 

Suresh’s LinkedIn page

Related episode you might enjoy about responsible AI use

AI fun fact article in the Atlantic 

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Ben Kus is the chief technology officer at Box, where he’s responsible for developing Box's technology vision and strategy.  Previously, Ben was the VP of product management at Box. Before joining Box, he was the co founder and CTO of Subspace, an enterprise security solution that was acquired by Box. 

Ben’s held various leadership positions, including chief architect for IBM and senior director of technology for BigFix.  

What we discuss:

• The role of generative AI in enhancing productivity and unlocking new use cases within enterprises, focusing on content management.
• Ben shares insights into Box's innovative culture and compares it to other companies like IBM, highlighting the company's approach to technology and innovation.
• The discussion touches on responsible AI use, regulatory considerations, and Box's commitment to transparency and compliance.
• Ben addresses concerns about AI's impact on jobs, emphasizing AI's role in augmenting productivity rather than replacing human jobs.
• Future trends in AI, including personalized AI assistance and potential advancements in AI capabilities, are explored.
• The conversation ends with a fun anecdote about Box's CEO, Aaron Levie, known for his magic tricks and the company's unique culture of bringing your own self to work.

Additional resources

• Ben’s LinkedIn 
• Other episodes you might enjoy about the future of Media & AI
• Fun fact: how much energy is required to create an image with generative AI? 

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Neil Mandt is a Hollywood entrepreneur, a five-time Emmy winner, and producer of the 2022 Golden Globes.  A pioneer in AR and VR technology, and a pro sports owner, since getting his start in Hollywood at age 10, there's almost no award he hasn't received, and almost no new form of media he hasn't tested and improved. 

What we cover

• In this conversation, Neil shares insights into the evolving landscape of Hollywood and the role of AI in content creation and consumption.
• Neil discusses the potential of AI to democratize content creation, enabling individuals to produce high-quality movies and TV series with minimal resources.
• We delve into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in the entertainment industry, including the gamification of user engagement and personalized content experiences.
• Neil emphasizes the importance of embracing AI tools for content creators to stay competitive and adapt to changing consumer preferences.
• Neil highlights the transformative potential of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies in enhancing the content consumption experience.
• Neil provides valuable insights into the skills required for content producers to thrive in a future where AI-driven, interactive storytelling becomes the norm.
• And much more.

Additional resources

• Neil’s site — Neilmandt.com 
• Course on making it in media and entertainment — https://neilmandt.com/course
• Other episodes you might enjoy — https://aiandthefutureofwork.buzzsprout.com/520474/14689727-babak-hodjat-cto-of-ai-at-cognizant-on-creating-siri-and-the-evolution-of-ai

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Babak is the CTO of AI at Cognizant, the 34 billion market cap provider of tech services with more than 350, 000 global employees. He's the former co-founder and CEO of Sentient, a business responsible for the core technology behind the world's largest distributed artificial intelligence system. Before co-founding Sentient, Babak co-founded and was the CTO and a board member of Dejima where he developed the foundational technology that ultimately became Apple's Siri. 

He's the primary inventor of Dejima's patented technology. Babak has 31 granted or pending patents, is a published author, and is one of the most respected thought leaders in AI.  He holds a PhD in machine intelligence from Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. 

In our conversation, we discuss: 

• The recent executive order on AI regulation issued by the Biden administration, exploring its key themes such as the development of a national registry for foundational large language models and safety test result sharing by vendors.
• Babak shares insights into the challenges and engineering intricacies involved in developing and scaling AI systems, emphasizing the importance of understanding the fundamental differences between large language models and human intelligence.
• The concept of responsible AI and the urgent need for defining unambiguous ethical standards, with Babak expressing concerns about AI potentially being used for destructive or malicious purposes in the wrong hands.
• Babak's experience as a pioneer in developing foundational technologies for Siri
• The limitations and expectations surrounding large language models shed light on the challenges of fine-tuning and reinforcing these models, as well as the misconceptions related to their learning capabilities during interactions.
• The concept of active ontology and its role in the early development of Siri, highlights the revolutionary approach that focused on modeling functionality and ontology first, offering insights into the evolution of natural language technology over the past 25 years.

Additional resources

• Babak's LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/babakhodjat/
• Another episode you might enjoy — https://aiandthefutureofwork.buzzsprout.com/520474/14341487-navrina-singh-founder-ceo-of-credo-ai-discusses-ai-governance-ethics

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Richie Cotton and his co-host Adel have published over 150 episodes of the DataFramed podcast with some amazing guests. Richie's also a data evangelist for  DataCamp and a data scientist by training. He helps train DataCamp students and has been instrumental in the company's success. DataCamp has trained data teams at more than 2,500 companies, including 80 percent of the Fortune 100. Richie has degrees in Math from the University of Warwick and the University of York. 

In our conversation, we discuss: 

• The Evolving Role of Data Scientists: Richie Cotton shares insights into the changing landscape of data science and how the role of data scientists is expected to transform in the next decade, emphasizing the increasing accessibility of powerful tools.
• Ethical Considerations in AI: we delve into the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, exploring the responsibility of data scientists and AI practitioners in addressing issues such as bias, transparency, and privacy in their work.
• Future Skills for Data Scientists: Richie discusses the essential technical skills for data scientists, including the ongoing debate between Python and R, and highlights the importance of staying adaptable as technology evolves.
• AI's Impact on Business Operations: we explore the potential impact of AI on various industries, focusing on business operations and efficiency, providing valuable insights for professionals looking to harness AI for strategic advantages.
• Predictions for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Richie shares intriguing perspectives on the timeline for achieving artificial general intelligence, citing predictions that AGI might become a reality in the 2030s and discussing the potential implications of such advancements.
• Teaching and Learning Data Science at Scale: we shed light on Richie's experience at DataCamp, where he has been instrumental in teaching data science to hundreds of thousands of individuals, highlighting the platform's mission to make data science education accessible globally.

Additional resources

• Listen to Richie’s podcast — https://www.datacamp.com/podcast
• Other episodes you might enjoy — https://aiandthefutureofwork.buzzsprout.com/520474/14341487-navrina-singh-founder-ceo-of-credo-ai-discusses-ai-governance-ethics

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Matt Martin is on a mission to help the world make time for what matters. He founded Clockwise in 2016 to fix the time problem.

Since then, he and the team have raised 76 million from exceptional investors, including Greylock, Cotu, Excel, Bain, and a common investor, the Slack Fund.  More than 15, 000 organizations run Clockwise. Matt was also an engineering leader at Relate IQ before Salesforce acquired it for $390 million in 2014.

In our conversation, we discuss: 

• Interesting ways to improve your productivity
• New developments in GPT-4 supporting productivity
• Challenges of time management and the impact of AI in reshaping scheduling practices, emphasizing the importance of tools like Clockwise in optimizing work schedules.
• Lesson in entrepreneurship from Matt
• How AI can be leveraged to make your work more fulfilling
• Much more

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Prasad Kawthekar is the Co-Founder & CEO of Dashworks, an all-in-one AI search assistant. It enables users to find any document, message, or email and to accelerate a team's productivity. With over 40+ integrations, Dashworks enables teams to find and organize their internal knowledge across apps from one place and leverage their collective expertise.

In our conversation, we discuss: 

• The historical evolution of enterprise search tools
• The challenges to enterprise search adoption: such as API integration complexities persist, hindering widespread adoption
• The role of Generative AI in search
• Limitations of current AI models and what the future holds for them.
• What are some considerations for future AI development?
• The potential of retrieval-augmented generative AI (RAG) in providing accurate and factual responses, while also acknowledging its limitations and potential for further evolution

Additional resources: 

• Visit Dashworks: https://www.dashworks.ai/
• Another episode you might like: https://aiandthefutureofwork.buzzsprout.com/520474/14464391-dr-eric-siegel-founder-of-machine-learning-week-on-6-steps-to-usher-in-successful-ml-projects

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Grant Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Gamma, the company reimagining presentations by building what some call the “anti-PowerPoint.” Since its launch in 2022, Gamma has grown to over 70 million users, with 30 million gammas created each month, and has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). These milestones were achieved profitably, with a team of just 50 people (that’s about $2 million in ARR per employee) and a Series B round at a $2.1 billion valuation, led by Sarah Wang at Andreessen Horowitz.

Before founding Gamma in 2020, Grant led finance at Optimizely, where he developed a passion for A/B testing. He began his career in investment banking and holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• How Gamma went from an idea to one of the fastest-growing presentation tools in the world with $100M ARR and a 50-person team
• Why Grant and his co-founders set out to reinvent slides from scratch instead of improving on PowerPoint
• Lessons from Optimizely that shaped Gamma’s culture of experimentation and rapid iteration
• How Grant thinks about product-market fit and why every feature must solve real user pain instead of mimicking the competition
• How AI serves as a design partner, not a replacement for human creativity, and why “human in the loop” is central to Gamma’s philosophy
• The importance of building user trust in generative AI through transparency, feedback loops, and community programs like the “Gambassador” initiative
• How resilience, early failures, and conviction helped Gamma survive investor rejection and a near-collapse during the SVB crisis

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Grant on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• On How To Revolutionize Finance and Financial Decision Making using AI.

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Atif has blazed trails in Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500 for over 25 years. After rising through digital native companies like Amazon, Yahoo!, and AOL, Atif held C-suite roles at McDonald’s, Volvo, and MGM Resorts. He oversaw thousands of employees as a global P&L, transformation, and innovation leader. 

Rafiq was the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500, a pioneering role he held at McDonalds, and he rose to the President level in the Fortune 300. While leading business units, teams, and growth for companies, Atif has built a large following as one of today’s top management thinkers. Over 500,000 people follow his ideas about management and leadership on LinkedIn, where he is a Top Voice, and his newsletter Re:wire has over 100,000 subscribers. Atif has also been nominated 

Atif is passionate about helping companies push boldly into the future. He accomplishes this through Ritual, a software app revolutionizing how teams innovate and problem-solve, and through his work as keynote speaker, Board member, and CEO advisor. 

Listen and learn

• What’s broken about the decision-making process in large companies
• What is the decision sprint process 
• How will team formation/team structure change as a result of AI?
• How do we measure the quality of the output of a decision sprint?
• What are the smartest ways to engage generative AI in the decision sprint process?
• How do you reasonably deal with the fear of AI replacing your job?
• Much more

Resources

— Buy the book — https://www.decisionsprint.com/

— Ritual — https://www.ritual.work/

—  Listen to a related episode — https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/14158168-bruce-feiler-best-selling-author-ted-celebrity-tv-personality-and-new-york-times-columnist-discusses-navigating-life-transitions

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Dr. Eric Siegel is a leading consultant and former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He is the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series and its new sister, Generative AI World, the instructor of the acclaimed online course “Machine Learning Leadership and Practice – End-to-End Mastery,” executive editor of The Machine Learning Times, and a frequent keynote speaker. He wrote the bestselling "Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die," which has been used in courses at hundreds of universities, as well as "The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment." 

Eric’s interdisciplinary work bridges the stubborn technology/business gap. At Columbia, he won the Distinguished Faculty award when teaching the graduate *computer science* courses in ML and AI. Later, he served as a *business school* professor at UVA Darden. Eric has appeared on numerous media channels, including Bloomberg, National Geographic, and NPR, and has published in Newsweek, HBR, SciAm blog, WaPo, WSJ, and more.

Listen and learn

• How he’s progressed in the field of machine learning over 30 years
• 6-step process to usher in machine learning programs from conception to deployment 
• What 3 things non-technical people in business should know about how machine learning works & delivers value
• How to know when to use classical machine learning vs generative AI to solve a data problem
• How to mitigate the impact of human bias in shaping AI

Resources

• Purchase "The AI Playbook" — http://www.bizML.com 
• Scott Zoldi episode —https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/520474.rss

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Juliette Powell is the founder and managing partner of Kleiner Powell International [KPI], a New York City-based consultancy. As a consultant at the intersection of responsible technology and business, she has advised large companies and governments on how to deal with the accelerating change underway due to AI-enabled technological innovation coupled with shifting social dynamics and heightened global competition. She’s also on the faculty at New York University and teaches in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. 

Art Kleiner is a writer, lecturer, and consultant with a background in management, interactive media, corporate environmentalism, scenario planning, and organizational learning. He is a co-author (with Pete Senge et al.) of the best-selling Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, and Schools That Learn; and author of Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success. Since 1986, he has taught in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Juliette and Art co-authored a new book, The AI Dilemma: 7 Principles for Responsible Technology.

Listen and learn

• How Juliette and Art started their careers 
• The Principles of Responsible Technology 
• What could happen if AI became sentient? 
• How can we prevent AI from reinforcing negative biases and discrimination?
• How people and organizations can practice better ethics when leveraging AI?
• What will it take to engrain more ethical, equity-oriented thinking into business education?  
• Much more

References in this episode…

• Juliette and Art's website
• Gary F. Bengier discusses AI’s impact on humanity

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Dave Kellogg is an advisor, director, consultant, angel investor, and blogger focused on enterprise software startups.  He’s the executive-in-residence (EIR) at Balderton Capital and the principal of his own eponymous consulting business.

He brings an uncommon perspective to startup challenges having 10 years’ experience at each of the CEO, CMO, and independent director levels across 10+ companies ranging in size from zero to over $1B in revenues.

Dave also authors the Kellblog which covers topics related to starting, leading, and scaling enterprise software startups including strategy, marketing, positioning, messaging, management, go-to-market, SaaS metrics, and venture capital financing.

Listen and learn

• How Dave did with last year's predictions
• What's ahead for the venture capital ecosystem in a post ZIRP environment
• How CIOs are investing in automation
• What to expect from the big LLM vendors
• What's ahead for AI and copyright protection in 2024
• And much more...

References in this episode…

• Kellblog — https://kellblog.com/
• Amr Awadallah, Vectara CEO, on AI and the Future of Work

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Navrina Singh is the Founder and CEO of Credo AI, a Governance SaaS platform empowering enterprises to deliver Responsible AI. A technology leader with over 18+ years of experience in Enterprise SaaS, AI and Mobile, Navrina has held multiple product and business leadership roles at Microsoft and Qualcomm. 

Navrina and the team have been on a mission to help organizations create AI that adheres to the most ethical standards since March 2020. Credo has raised over $13 million from an impressive list of investors that includes Decibel Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, and the AI Fund, among others. Navrina is a member of the national AI advisory committee and is a world Economic Forum global leader. Prepare to be inspired.

Listen and learn

• If Navrina ran the world, how she’d regulate AI 
• How to incorporate consumer feedback & inclusive practices into the AI development process
• How companies can start creating trustworthy, ethical AI 
• How Navrina is empowering companies to deliver responsible AI at scale
• Criteria to consider for combatting algorithmic bias
• How to deal with the fear of being replaced by machines
• Navrina's advice to young entrepreneurs

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Adam Wenchel is the CEO of Arthur, a company with a platform that gives you an immediate comprehensive AI performance solution across LLMs, Computer Vision, Tabular Data, and NLP. 

Adam and the team have been making AI observable for almost 5 years with Arthur. Arthur has raised over $60 million from a legendary group of investors including Index Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Work-Bench, and others. An equal list of impressive customers they’ve served includes Humana and Plaid, among others. 

Listen and learn

• How Adam started his career in AI
• How he helped map out Capital One’s early AI strategy 
• The value of evaluating AI model performance 
• How Arthur launched its first LLM-specific product and what the team learned 
• How to monitor the performance of an LLM model in production and which questions to ask when evaluating it 
• The lessons from growing a startup that nobody talks about 

References in this episode…

• Arthur’s website - https://www.arthur.ai/

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Sean Behr is the CEO of Fountain, the company transforming the hiring process for hourly workers. Sean and the team have helped more than 80M applicants in 75 countries at places like Stitch Fix, sweetgreen, and gopuff. Fountain has raised $225M to date most recently through a $100M series C last June from an amazing list of investors including B Capital Group, SoftBank, DCM, and Uncork Capital.

Sean joined Fountain as CEO in 2020 after founding fleet infrastructure platform Stratim, serving as SVP of Adap.tv through its acquisition by AOL, and holding various management roles at Shopping.com.

Listen and learn...

1. How Sean is creating opportunities for frontline workers around the world
2. What's uniquely challenging about hiring frontline vs. knowledge workers
3. How long before robots will replace human frontline workers
4. The ethical implications of using AI in hiring
5. What biases are embedded in the hiring process... without AI
6. Why the future of hiring... is more human thanks to AI

References in this episode...

1. May Habib, Writer CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
2. Josh Bersin, HRTech pioner, on AI and the Future of Work
3. Why every organization needs a Chief Ethics Officer

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Wipro is one of the largest providers of tech and tech services in the world with more than 250,000 employees. It was started in 1945 and is now the third largest software company in India with a market cap of more than $27B.

We're lucky to be joined today by the leader driving Wipro's technology vision. Subha Tatavarti joined Wipro as Chief Technology Officer in March 2021 after a distinguished career in tech leadership roles at companies like Walmart and PayPal where she led the product, data, and infrastructure teams. Subha holds a Masters in Computer Science. She's an avid hiker and enjoys trail running and books on philosophy.

Listen and learn...

1. What Wipro's 1,400+ enterprise customers expect from gen AI
2. What are the top use cases for enterprise AI in 2024
3. Why the quality of AI-generated code has surprised Subha
4. One year in... how does Subha describe the state of enterprise adoption of gen AI
5. What is holding back broader adoption of gen AI
6. Why regulatory frameworks alone are sufficient to reign in the bad actors
7. Early adopting industries and geographies you wouldn't expect
8. Subha's advice to CIOs and CTOs about how to pick the right business problem to solve with AI
9. Subha's vision for the future of human interaction

References in today's episode...

• Durga Malladi, Qualcomm SVP, on AI and the Future of Work
• AI classifiers can't distinguish human from AI-generated content
• Wipro's billion-dollar investment in AI 
• The Wipro ai 360 hub
• Wipro's approach to responsible AI
• The Azim Premji Foundation

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We've had amazing unicorn CEOs recently on this podcast but today's a first. Wade Foster, CEO and co-founder of Zapier grew his company to a $5B valuation in 2021 on a $1.3M raise in 2012. Let that sink in. The power of product-market fit and listening to your customers is impossible to overstate.

Wade and his co-founders Bryan and Mike launched Zapier in 2012 as part of the YC S12 batch.

The company has grown to more 800 employees in 40 countries and the product is used by 2.2M businesses and integrates more than 5,000 apps that have been used to create more than 25 million zaps, or automated workflows.

Listen and learn...

1. Wade's humble path from an internship in Columbia, MO... to a $5B unicorn
2. A simple problem: the Zapier origin story
3. The Zap that started it all...
4. Voice-first Zaps? Maybe!
5. The future of the "citizen developer"... no-code interfaces + enterprise security
6. Why all the new GenAI apps will create more need for Zaps
7. The Zapier LLM architecture
8. How to find product-market fit... from an expert
9. Creating a company that's a verb: how "Zapier" got its name
10. Wade reflects on his success and the entrepreneurial journey
11. What's ahead for Wade and Zapier

References in this episode...

1. Vijay Tella, Workato CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
2. Amr Awadallah, Vectara CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
3. ChatGPT for the enterprise: what's included

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BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most thoughtful voices on contemporary life. He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS,  THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES, and COUNCIL OF DADS. His three TED Talks have been viewed more than four million times, and he teaches the TED Course HOW TO MASTER LIFE TRANSITIONS. His latest book, THE SEARCH: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World (May 2023), is a bold new roadmap for finding meaning and purpose at work.

A longtime columnist at the New York Times, Bruce now writes the popular newsletter THE NONLINEAR LIFE. He has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Gourmet, where he won three James Beard Awards. A former circus clown, he has been the subject of a Jay Leno joke and a JEOPARDY! question, and his face appears on a postage stamp in the Grenadines.

Listen and learn...

1. Bruce's search for meaning in the face of setbacks and challenges
2. How to reconcile our complicated relationship with work and our personal search for meaning
3. Bruce's "three lies and a truth about work"
4. How to identify what brings you meaning
5. The four historical changes in the nature of work
6. Why it's important to "ignore the lessons of your parents"
7. The one thing we know about AI and the future of work

References in this episode...

• Bill Davidow on AI and the Future of Work
• Dr. Meredith Broussard on AI and the Future of Work
• Linda Rottenberg on AI and the Future of Work
• How soon before LLMs replace human comedians?

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Dennis Kozak is the CEO of Ivanti, a leading enterprise IT and security company generating over $1 billion in annual revenue and serving more than 40,000 customers. He previously served as Ivanti’s COO after holding senior leadership roles at Avaya. Earlier in his career, Dennis spent nearly 23 years at CA Software (now Broadcom), where he led global partnership sales and services teams. He holds a BS in Accounting from St. Joseph’s University in Long Island.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Dennis’s leadership journey from CA Technologies and Avaya to becoming CEO of Ivanti, and what prepared him to lead a billion-dollar IT security company
• Why convergence between cybersecurity and IT operations is accelerating, and how Ivanti is positioning itself at the center of that shift
• The impact of generative AI on IT support, including how Ivanti is building AI agents to handle routine tickets and empower human technicians
• How organizations can reduce cyber risk by closing visibility gaps and simplifying their tech stack
• The challenges of securing distributed workforces in a hybrid world, and why automation is critical to stay ahead of threats
• Why Dennis believes the future of enterprise IT is about blending user experience with security, not choosing between them

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Dennis on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• On How to Reimagine Fan Experiences and Digital Transformation.

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We've met future of work visionaries recently like Gary Bolles, Dr. John Boudreau, Mark McCrindle, and Josh Bersin. All have shared unique perspectives on how AI is redefining the employee experience. Today's guest belongs on that Mt. Rushmore of future of work luminaries.

Josh Drean is Co-founder & Director of Employee Experience at The Work3 Institute, AI + Work Advisor at the Harvard Innovation Labs, and Co-author of Employment is Dead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024)

His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and The Economist and he has made appearances on The Today Show, NBC, and FOX Business. He speaks internationally to bring work tech insights to digital-first leaders who value human-centric work experiences.

Listen and learn...

1. How AI is changing our relationship with work
2. Work 3... vs. work 1 and work 2
3. How the metaverse is enabling a global talent marketplace
4. What RTW is doing to the relationship between employees and employers
5. Why "employment is dead"... but we'll soon enjoy work more as a result
6. "There are two camps... those who are embracing AI... and those who will become obsolete."
7. Why employee surveillance is the wrong approach
8. Why "passion is future-proof"

References in this episode...

1. Josh Bersin on AI and the Future of Work
2. Gary Bolles on AI and the Future of Work
3. James Lawton from Zebra on AI and the Future of Work
4. AI Snake Oil by Princeton Professor Arvind Narayanan
5. Josh Drean on YouTube

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Tom Wheeler served as the 31st Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission after being appointed to the role by President Obama in November 2013. His chairmanship has been described as “The most productive Commission in the history of the agency.”

Prior to that, he was a venture capitalist and, among other roles, the CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) where we first met in 2001. He is the only person to be elected to both the Cable Television Hall of Fame and the Wireless Hall of Fame, which led President Obama to proclaim him “the Bo Jackson of telecom.” Additionally, Tom is an award-winning author, a sought after speaker about topics ranging from leadership to net neutrality, and a visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Listen and learn:

1. Why today's Digital Age is reminiscent of the early 20th century Gilded Age
2. How owners of today's digital pathways make rules that govern privacy and safety
3. What does history teach us about how can we take back control of our data from Big Tech
4. How to make capitalism work for everyone
5. Why AI is triggering an awareness of the impact of Big Tech on our lives
6. What's different about regulatory models in the digital era
7. Why we need a new agile, digital-first agency to regulate Big Tech
8. How to regulate Big Tech without stifling innovation

References in this episode:

• Mark McCrindle on AI and the Future of Work
• Pew Research: 68% of US adults don't trust Big Tech to self-regulate
• Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age
• Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor
• Which tasks is AI being used to do at work today?

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Today’s guest is a General Partner at Foundation Capital, one of the most iconic venture capital firms in the world. Foundation has found and funded companies like Netflix, Solana, Jasper, and the list goes on.

Joanne Chen began her investing career at Foundation in 2014 and has sourced and advised an incredible group of companies including Tonkean, Tubi, and CaptivateIQ. Joanne received her BS in EE and CS from Cal and her MBA from the University of Chicago. She's also a popular TEDx speaker.

Today we get a master class on how the best are adapting to one of the most challenging venture investing climates in decades. Joanne and I met on a panel discussion a few months back . I've been looking forward to introducing her to our community.

Listen and learn...

1. Joanne's perspective on the euphoria surrounding GenAI
2. What's different about investing in AI post-ChatGPT
3. Why AI tools are increasing the pace of innovation
4. The difference between crypto and AI investing
5. What responsible AI means to Joanne
6. Joanne's advice to "AI entrepreneurs" pitching venture investors
7. How long before AI will take Joanne's job

References in this episode...

1. Ashu Garg on AI and the Future of Work
2. Joanne's TEDx talk: Confessions of an AI Investor
3. Joanne's TEDx talk: Why AI Promises a Brighter Future
4. The ethical implications of using AI in healthcare

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Today’s guest is one of the most respected thought leaders in the HR and HRTech space. Josh Bersin’s name is synomous with HR thought leadership. He first started covering the space in 2001 before selling Bersin & Associates to Deloitte in 2012. His current namesake company, The Josh Bersin Company, hosts the popular annual conference Irresistible and is a prolific publisher of content related to the future of work, talent management, corporate learning, and leadership.

Josh is also the author of the popular book Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the World's Most Enduring, Employee-Focused Organizations, which was published in 2022. Oh, and he also hosts a great podcast. I always enjoy his candid commentary on HRTech.

Listen and learn...

1. The single employee behavior that most impacts productivity
2. What people practice surprised Josh most about what distinguishes leading from lagging companies
3. How "taking care of people" saved many companies during the pandemic
4. The HRTech innovation that improves the employee experience most
5. Why employees took back power from employers... and insisted on better tools
6. Where are there opportunities to innovate in HRTech
7. How AI "meets people in the flow of work"
8. How talent intelligence is assisting HR leaders
9. Why employees shouldn't feel threatened by AI
10. Why what Josh calls "organizational ingenuity" is more important than having the best tech skills
11. The future of work, according to Josh

References in this episode...

• Mark McCrindle on AI and the Future of Work
• Dr. John Boudreau on AI and the Future of Work
• Gary Bolles on AI and the Future of Work
• Josh's book Irresistible
• Josh's podcast
• Why are LLMs getting dumber?

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Amr and I met on a genAI panel and everything he said was both insightful and contrarian. Immediately, I knew I wanted to introduce him to you. Amr is a legend in the search space who, by the way, also founded Cloudera which went public in 2017 at a valuation of over $5B.

Dr. Amr Awadallah is a luminary in the world of information retrieval. He's the CEO and cofounder of Vectara, a company that is revolutionizing how we find meaning across all languages of the world using the latest advances in Deep Neural Networks, Large Language Models, and Natural Language Processing. He previously served as VP of Developer Relations for Google Cloud. Prior to joining Google in Nov 2019, Amr co-founded Cloudera in 2008 and as Global CTO. He also served as vice president of product intelligence engineering at Yahoo! from 2000-2008. Amr received his PhD in EE from Stanford University, and his Bachelor and Masters Degrees from Cairo University, Egypt.

Listen and learn...

1. How Amr discovered the power of "talking to software" via LLMs while at Google
2. About the history of new computing modalities
3. About the current state of generative AI
4. The technical explanation for hallucination in LLMs
5. How do we mitigate bias in LLM models and prevent copyright infringement
6. Why a semantic understanding of queries is the next frontier in search
7. The challenge faced by search providers of making money incorporating ads into LLM-based answers
8. How "grounded search" will fix the hallucination problem
9. What is a "fact" in the era of ChatGPT?
10. How long before we have "antivirus sofware for fact-checking" genAI propaganda
11. How should AI be regulated... and who is responsible for AI regulation
12. The next big idea in genAI Amr and I are ready to fund
13. Amr's advice to entrepreneurs... and to himself

References in this episode...

1. Eric Olson, Consensus CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
2. D Das, Sorcero CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
3. Seth Earley, Earley Information Science, on AI and the Future of Work
4. ChatGPT for searching scientific papers

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Dr. John Boudreau is a luminary in the future of work academic community. He has published more than 50 books and articles. His scholarly research is published in Management Science, Academy of Management Executives, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. Features on his work have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company and Business Week, among others. 

Dr. Boudreau helped  establish and then directed the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS), at Cornell University, where he was a professor for over 20 years, before his current position as Research Director for the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California.

Thanks to friend of the podcast David Creelman for the intro to Dr. Boudreau!

Listen and learn...

1. How Dr. Boudreau got his start as an academic in HRTech
2. What inspired Dr. Boudreau to make work life better for employees everywhere
3. How Dr. Boudreau defines work (the most enlightened definition we've heard)
4. How to build high-functioning teams
5. Why diverse teams don't perform better
6. How alternative work and workers are redefining the labor force
7. Why jobs don't equal work and degrees don't equal jobs
8. What does it mean to be human when your colleague is a bot
9. Why ATM machines led to more human bank tellers being hired
10. About the rise of internal talent marketplaces
11. Which skills AI will never automate

References in this episode...

• Mark McCrindle on AI and the Future of Work
• Bryan Talebi from Ahura on AI and the Future of Work
• Kamal Ahluwalia from Eightfold on AI and the Future of Work
• Work without Jobs, Dr. Boudreau's most recent book
• The Center for Effective Organizations 
• Using AI as a co-pilot for songwriting

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Today's guest has been bringing families together online since 1997 when he founded Ancestry.com which has served more than 13 billion profiles, amassed 40 billion people records, and generated over a billion dollars in revenue. He followed that up with FamilyLink which he founded in 2007 and today has more than 50 million users.

For the past several years, Paul Allen has been on a new adventure having founded Soar.com in 2017. He and the team are connecting employees to stories from trusted sources to help them make better, more informed decisions.

Soar indexes millions of hours of video and audio content in domains as diverse as academic lectures, political hearings, and stump speeches. Not surprisingly, he and the team are using AI to make all that content discoverable and accessible.

Paul is a sought after speaker, a director of the Human Justice Foundation, and is one of the most mission-driven entrepreneurs of our generation.

Listen and learn...

1. Paul's number one business lesson
2. How Paul "uplifts humanity" with AI
3. Why the "factory education system" doesn't work
4. Why AGI won't be the end of civilization
5. How an AI studio for audio transcription works
6. The role of CitizenGPT... and why it won't hallucinate
7. How AI is restoring lost human connections
8. How to detect and mitigate the danger of deepfake video content using a blockchain
9. What it means to be an ethical publisher of content in the age of AI
10. Paul's (not so obvious) secret to success

References in this episode...

• Guillermo Corea from SHRM on AI and the Future of Work
• The current state of AI ethics
• Dr. Sanchez' WHY Institute
• Sarah Allen, acclaimed author (and Paul's daughter)
• The autobiography of Booker T. Washington

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Anyone who has ever hired a new employee knows how important and broken the background check process is. The experience is awful for candidates and employers. Plus, it's inherently unfair for under-represented and non-traditional candidates. Imagine a world where hiring the best people is easier and faster and all forms of verification data are provided automatically from trusted sources.

Today's guest is making that vision a reality. Denise Hemke is the Chief Product Officer at Checkr, the amazing company making employee screening more fair for everyone. Checkr has raised nearly $700M since its founding in 2014. Denise heads up product management, design, and program management after having served in various leadership roles at Workday including most recently GM for Analytics. Denise is also the San Francisco chapter lead for the excellent organization Products That Count started by friend of the podcast SC Moatti.

Listen and learn...

1. How to fix the broken background check process
2. How to give candidates with non-traditional backgrounds access to the labor force
3. How technology is making the hiring process more fair and helping workers get paid faster
4. How to use AI to reduce bias in hiring decisions
5. How AI used for background checks should be regulated
6. What Denise learned about building customer communities as a General Manager at Workday

References in this episode...

• Mustafa Suleyman's new Turing test
• Kamal Ahluwalia, former President of Eightfold, on AI and the Future of Work
• Giselle Mota from ADP on AI and the Future of Work

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AI is here to accelerate the world's creativity. In fact, it's one of the things generative AI does best. Imagine a world where personalized campaigns help products you love find you. Today's guest did just that and he created Evolv AI to help brands connect with customers across all digital channels. 

Tyler Foster is the CTO of Evolv AI, a platform that helps brands improve conversion and experiment faster. He started the company with CEO Michael Scharff in 2019 and together they've grown it into an early leader in AI-first digital experimentation having helped brands like Safelite, DirectTV, and Verizon. Prior to Evolv AI, Tyler was the founding CEO and Chief Architect of Senient Systems and an early Software Engineer at Cloudera.

Listen and learn...

1. How a farmhand and SCUBA diver became an AI developer
2. How AI is helping brands target consumers
3. The tradeoff between personalization and data collection
4. How to eliminate bias in automated decisions
5. Will AI eliminate creative jobs?
6. How society needs to adapt to new definitions of work imposed by AI
7. Why we need to disconnect ideas from tools and processes
8. What does it mean that we're entering a "post-truth" era?
9. Why AI is more fair than humans

References in this episode...

• Meredith Broussard on AI and the Future of Work
• Diane Keng from Breinify on AI and the Future of Work
• Are AI-generated ads more or less effective?
• Evolv.ai

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Tim Guleri has had a remarkable run at Sierra Ventures since 2001. He has invested in transcendent companies including Sourcefire and MakeMyTrip which both went public. Before that, Tim had a successful career as an entrepreneur and exec at companies like Scopus and Octane which was acquired by Epiphany in 2000.

Sierra has one of the strongest future of work and AI portfolios that includes companies like Paro, Krisp, and SupportLogic which acquired Emtropy Labs which was founded by great former guest Harish Batlapenamurthy. In full disclosure, Sierra and I are both investors in ArmorCode.

Listen and learn...

1. Why the most successful venture investors were previously entrepreneurs
2. Tim's thesis for investing in gen AI customer journey company Simulate
3. How Tim identifies "gen AI whitewashing" when hearing pitches
4. Why gen AI is more than just another platform shift
5. How gen AI startups can beat Big Tech incumbents
6. Why all companies are ultimately "financial products"
7. Sierra's primary data from CIOs: "...they're spending money on use cases that unlock employee productivity"
8. What Tim means by "build horizontally but execute vertically"
9. Which jobs AI will eliminate vs. augment
10. Tim's "one that got away" pitch from his early days at Sierra

References in this episode...

• According to CNBC, 69% of U.S. adults are uncomfortable with AI that can mimic human thinking
• Ashu Garg from Foundation Capital on AI and the Future of Work
• Rory O'Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners on AI and the Future of Work
• Sierra Ventures

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Jim Curry is the co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, a venture firm based in Austin that has raised $330 million since its founding in 2015 and backed companies like Anaconda, Vidmob, DigniFi, and Benefitfocus. He brings more than two decades of experience in product, strategy, and corporate development from roles at Rackspace and Dell, and he co-founded OpenStack, one of the most widely used open source cloud computing platforms. Jim serves on the boards of Generation Serve and the University of Texas School of Undergraduate Studies. He holds degrees from UT Austin and Harvard Business School.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Jim’s journey from Rackspace to launching BuildGroup and why he believes in “longer, slower capital” to support mission-driven founders
• How his experience co-founding OpenStack shaped his thinking on community-driven innovation and open-source software
• What AI startups can learn from the cloud era—and why infrastructure still matters in the age of foundation models
• Why Jim believes VCs often push startups to scale too fast and what sustainable growth looks like in practice
• The impact of AI on venture capital and how BuildGroup thinks about investing in software companies that solve real problems
• How founders can balance product vision with pragmatism, especially when building in volatile markets

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter
• Connect with Jim on LinkedIn
• AI fun fact article
• On How to Develop NLP and AI Data Harvesting Using Games and Blockchains To Earn NFTs

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We've had interesting conversations about remote-first work with leaders like Jordan Husney, Parabol CEO, and Darren Murph who at the time was the global head of remote work at GitLab (thank you Darren for the intro to Adam). Today's guest has been building a platform to make distributed teams productive since long before it was fashionable. Adam Nathan founded Almanac in January of 2019 to challenge incumbents like Microsoft Office and Google's GSuite. 

Since then, he and the team have enabled organizations like Cisco, Credit Karma, and ByteDance to collaborate in shared workspaces.

Adam has raised more than $40M to date across two rounds from a legendary group of investors that includes Floodgate, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst. Prior to Almanac, Adam did his undergrad at Duke and he received his MBA from Harvard. He's also an active volunteer for The Salvation Army.

Listen and learn...

1. How being a product manager at Apple and Lyft inspired Adam to start a company to avoid wasting time at work
2. What's unique about remote-first work
3. Why remote teams need structure and transparency to be productive
4. How to eliminate time wasted in meetings without losing opportunities to build trusted relationships
5. How to charge for new LLM features in SaaS products
6. Why we tolerate LLM hallucinations
7. Where there's a gap in the market for a better collaboration experience
8. What Adam has learned from his entrepreneurial journey 

References in this episode...

• Jordan Husney from Parabol  on AI and the Future of Work
• Darren Murph from GitLab on AI and the Future of Work
• Why we need to shut down AI development to prevent AGI
• Almanac.io

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Durga Mulladi is the SVP & GM for Technology Planning & Edge Solutions at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., the iconic company best known for enabling cell phones via its CDMA technology and chipsets that were first demonstrated in 1985. Durga has been an integral part of Qualcomm's growth having spent nearly 26 years there in various technology leadership roles.

He holds 578 patents, is a senior member of IEEE, received his PhD in '98 from UCLA, and was awarded Qualcomm's IP excellence award. Durga's list of accolades and accomplishments goes on for days. We're all fortunate to learn from a wireless pioneer and true tech legend.

Listen and learn...

1. Durga's insights from more than 25 years pioneering wireless technology
2. An insider's view of Qualcomm's formula for success
3. How networks and chips enabled the birth of the smartphone
4. Qualcomm's AI roadmap
5. How soon we can expect LLMs running locally on phones
6. How AI takes advantage of the unique capabilities of 5G networks
7. How to figure out what transactions happen on the device vs. in the cloud
8. How LLM fine-tuning may soon happen on the edge of the network or on the device
9. What size LLMs can be run locally while managing power consumption
10. How to improve consumer trust in LLMs

References in this episode...

• JP Vasseur from Cisco on AI and the Future of Work
• Rene Steenvorden from Randstad on AI and the Future of Work
• How OpenAI's code interpreter is disrupting the field of Data Science

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In 2020 when today's guest founded her company the transformer architecture was relatively new and OpenAI was a science experiment funded by Elon Musk to ensure that AGI benefits all humanity. She and her team commercialized an early version of a co-pilot for writing content long before we appreciated the value of next-word prediction.

Since then, May Habib and the team have raised $21M from an exceptional group of investors including Insight Partners and Gradient Ventures. Today, Writer helps company authors comply with style and brand guidelines and also ensure grammatical accuracy. It's used by an amazing list or organizations including Spotify, Intuit, and Uber.

Prior to Writer, May co-founded Qordoba and was a Global Shaper for the World Economic Forum after graduating from Harvard with a BA in Economics.

Listen and learn...

1. How May got her start in NLP
2. What enterprise leaders don't understand about the current state of generative AI
3. How to speak to your data using LLMs 
4. Why Writer uses graph databases instead of vector databases for generative AI
5. How Writer mitigates the impact of bias, copyright infringement, and halluciations when using LLMs
6. How AI is being used to replace tasks people hate... without eliminating jobs
7. How AI helps users with neurodiversity issues like ADHD
8. How May navigated a tough company pivot

References in this episode...

• Mona Akmal, Falkon CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
• Alex Capecelatro, Josh.ai CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
• Making the web more accessible with AI for those with disabilities

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Today's guest created one of the largest communities for conversational AI and generative AI enthusiasts. Pete Erickson is the founder of Modev which hosts the popular VOICE & AI conference and also others including the GovAI Summit. 

Pete started the company back in 2009 and has since produced over 150 events across 89 countries that have connected more than 125,000 people. Pete and the team have created communities for tech companies like Samsung and Amazon. Today, we get a glimpse into the mind of a great entrepreneur who is focused on making AI education accessible to everyone.

Listen and learn...

1. How Modev went from a few people in a pizza shop... to a conversational AI event with more than  1,000 attendees
2. How Modev trained developers to build Alexa skills... in 2009
3. How new AI regulation is impacting the generative AI developer community
4. How Pete would regulate generative AI
5. About Sam Altman's request to Congress for OpenAI to be regulated
6. Should we expect AI vendors to regulate themselves?
7. What we can learn from GDPR in Europe about forthcoming AI regulation
8. How AI will transform the entertainment industry
9. Which jobs will be replaced by AI... and which ones are future-proof
10. What big news Pete will be announcing at the Voice & AI conference

References in this episode...

• The Voice & AI conference
• How Goldman Sachs says AI will increase global GDP
• Bradley Metrock, CEO of Project Voice, on AI and the Future of Work
• Daniel Davila, movie producer and Hollywood consultant, on AI and the Future of Work

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Entrepreneurs wonder what it’s like to be a VC. And VCs without an operating background often don’t understand the grit required to turn an idea into a successful business. The best investors have been successful operators first.

Today’s guest is one of those. Nick Adams founded Differential Ventures in 2017 to invest in B2B, data-first seed-stage companies. Since then, Nick and the team have invested in an impressive group of companies including Private AI, Ocrolus, and Agnostiq.

Before Differential, Nick helped grow companies like OPower and RAGE Frameworks in sales, marketing, and product leadership roles. Today we get to learn about how to innovate and grow a startup when the product is a venture fund.

Listen and learn...

1. How being an investor and entrepreneur are similar
2. The most outrageous pitch Nick has heard... and how it involved porn
3. How being a baseball player trained Nick to be a venture capitalist
4. Nick's advice for what to do after closing a big sales deal
5. Where there are opportunities for generative AI entrepreneurs to get funded
6. How AI is being used to design circuit boards
7. Nick's most recent investment... and what made him decide to write the check
8. What Nick is telling Congress we need to do to regulate AI

References in this episode...

• Why generative AI is desperately in need of regulation
• Metafold, new Differential investment
• Dan Grunfeld from Lightspeed on AI and the Future of Work

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Vijay Tella is an enterprise software legend having founded unicorn and Cloud100 company Workato nearly a decade ago after an amazing run as the founding SVP of Engineering at TIBCO and CEO of Qik which was acquired by Skype.

Vijay is a visionary leader who has raised more than $400M and built a team of nearly 1,000 employees. Workato is a leader in the fast-growing enterprise automation space and the company's customer list reads like the Wall Street Journal including organizations like Adobe, Atlassian, Coca-Cola, and Walmart to name a few.

Vijay's latest achievement is his book The New Automation Mindset - launching today on this podcast - in which he and his co-authors put the current generative AI euphoria into historical context and provide timely insights and case studies. 

Thanks to great former guest Carter Busse, Workato CIO, for the intro to Vijay.

Listen and learn...

1. How Vijay got his start as a "digital plumber" at TIBCO and Oracle
2. What Vijay learned about enterprise software delivering a consumer app at Qik
3. How modern tools democratize access to automating work
4. Vijay's advice to leaders about what to automate first
5. Why "replacing people with AI is the wrong approach"
6. How Workato is incorporating generative AI into its product
7. How AI is required to get the full benefit of automation
8. What jobs will replace those eliminated by automation

References in this episode...

• The New Automation Mindset by Vijay Tella
• Carter Busse on AI and the Future of Work
• Guru Banavar from Viome on AI and the Future of Work
• The Khanmigo AI tutor

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Christopher Penn writes one of the few newsletters I read weekly. I have no idea how I ended up on his mailing list but I’ll never opt out despite the rainbow “Unsubscribe here” buttons he prominently displays.

Christopher provides well-researched, thought-provoking commentary on all topics related to generative AI. Like recent guests Pradeep Menon and Ken Wenger Christopher doesn’t settle for soundbite-level commentary and he often shares unpopular opinions backed up with data.

Christopher is the Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai. He’s a six-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI, a Brand24 Top 100 Digital Marketer, an Onalytica Top 100 AI in Marketing influencer, and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is also the author of two dozen marketing books. His list of accolades and accomplishments goes on for days.

Listen and learn...

1. The number one question Christopher asks data-driven marketers
2. What has surprised Christopher most about the capabilities of LLMs
3. Why the letter to pause AI was "dumb"
4. The right way to remove bias and hate speech from LLMs
5. Open source vs. closed source AI... and how it's related to making pizza
6. Are we ready for AI vendors to censor content?
7. Christopher's predictions for how all enterprise software will incorporate generative AI
8. Why Christopher continues to hone his bow and arrow skills

References in this episode...

• Pradeep Menon on AI and the Future of Work
• Ken Wenger on AI and the Future of Work
• Tiernan Ray on AI and the Future of Work
• Christopher's (entertaining and informative!) newsletter
• DreamGPT... to glorify LLM hallucinations
• The bots aren't sentient!

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About 54 million Americans and 936 million patients globally suffer from sleep apnea and 80% of cases go undiagnosed. Today’s guest is fixing that problem.

Chris Fernandez co-founded EnsoData in June 2015 to use AI to make sleep studies more efficient, cost effective, and accurate.

Since then, he and the team have raised more than $30M from an exceptional group of investors including Zetta Venture Partners, M25 Ventures, and Inspire Medical Systems.

Chris received his bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biomedical and Medical Engineering. He also wrote one of the most thoughtful perspectives on the entrepreneurial journey when he handed over the reigns to new CEO Justin Mortara last November. At 8,200 words, it may also be one of the longest.

Listen and learn...

1. What led Chris to care about solving sleep problems
2. How EnsoData overcame being "a solution in search of a problem"
3. How AI and machine learning can be applied to sleep apnea
4. How being incubated by Y Combinator helped launch EnsoData
5. How to use brainwaves to train AI models to diagnose sleep issues
6. When we'll get "smart rooms" that adjust the environment to optimize for healthy sleep
7. How Chris and the team control for the impact of AI bias
8. How to improve the quality of your sleep... from an expert
9. What led Chris to replace himself as CEO

References in this episode...

• Gordon Wilson, Rain Neuromorphics CEO, on AI and the Future of Work
• Why We Sleep by Matt Walker
• Stanford Professor Dr. William Dement and the origins of sleep science

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We’ve had interesting recent discussions about AI and the law with great guests like Robert Plotkin. And we’ve had many interesting conversations about AI with CIO legends like Mark Settle from Okta and Carter Busse from Workato to name a few. In over 200 episodes we haven’t yet discussed how to deliver IT service to the legal industry.

Jim McKenna has been delivering technology to attorneys and coaching others who do the same for more than two decades. In his current role at perennial Silicon Valley top law firm Fenwick & West, Jim supports an organization of more than 1,000 employees as CIO. He oversees teams that manage IT and security and is first and foremost a thought leader for the business. Prior to Fenwick, Jim held similar roles at Morrison and Forester. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Legal Technology Association.

Thanks to Xavier, unsung hero and Fenwick IT specialist, for helping with A/V issues.

Listen and learn...

1. What's unique about delivering IT and security service to lawyers
2. How the legal industry shifted to work from home during the pandemic
3. What's ahead for LegalTech
4. Where there are opportunities for AI to predict future employee needs
5. How Jim keeps up with security and compliance requirements... while innovating
6. Jim's leadership advice: "Prepare in advance so when the tough occurs you're not afraid!"

References in this episode...

• Robert Plotkin on AI and the Future of Work
• Mark Settle on AI and the Future of Work
• Carter Busse on AI and the Future of Work
• How generative AI is being used to analyze patterns in DNA sequences

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Today’s guest has had a front row seat for every technology platform shift for the past 20+ years. More important, he has played an important role in enabling several of them.

Kit Colbert joined tech stalwart VMware in September 2003 and currently serves as senior vice president and chief technology officer. He is responsible for ensuring VMware’s long term technology leadership through research and innovation programs. Kit manages the VMware Engineering Services team, advanced R&D initiatives, the Design/UX team and the company’s ESG commitments.

Kit was previously VMware’s Cloud CTO, General Manager of VMware’s Cloud-Native Apps business, CTO for VMware’s End-User Computing Business, and the lead architect for the vRealize Operations Suite. 

Kit is a recognized thought-leader on application modernization and multi-cloud trends and a frequent speaker. He holds a bachelor’s of science in computer science from Brown University.

Listen and learn...

1. How a Silicon Valley stalwart like VMware innovates from the inside
2. How VMware's founder-led culture continues to influence the company today
3. How VMware reinvented itself beyond desktop virtualization
4. Kit's recipe for innovation
5. Why crypto and AI hype are similar
6. Kit's perspective on how to regulate AI
7. VMware's generative AI strategy

References in this episode...

• Andi Mann from Sageable and Splunk on AI and the Future of Work
• Diane Greene and the history of VMware
• Kit's team's blog

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In this special episode of AI and the Future of Work, host Dan Turchin explores one of the most ambitious and debated frontiers in technology: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

What is AGI? How close are we to creating machines that truly think, reason, and learn like humans? And what will that mean for the future of work, creativity, and ethics?

This compilation episode revisits insights from three leading thinkers who have spent years defining, debating, and developing the next generation of intelligent systems.

Featuring Guests

🔹 Peter Voss, CEO & Chief Scientist, Aigo.ai
 🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/15366873 

🔹 Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI, Cognizant
 🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/14689727 

🔹 Pankaj Kedia, Founder, 2468 Ventures
 🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/15662279 

✅ What You’ll Learn

• What truly defines Artificial General Intelligence and how it differs from narrow AI
• Why scaling large models isn’t enough to achieve real cognition
• How cognitive and embodied AI could bridge the gap to human-like understanding
• Why AGI may usher in a new “age of abundance” where work, creativity, and purpose are redefined

💬 Inspired by this episode?

Share your favorite insight on social media and tag us.
And don’t forget to subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of AI and work.

Other special episodes:

• Lessons from Four Unicorn CEOs Disrupting Massive Markets with AI (Special Episode)
• Ethical AI in Hiring: How to Stay Compliant While Building a Fairer Future of Work (HR Day Special Episode)
• The Future of AI Ethics Special: Perspectives from Women Leaders in AI on Bias, Accountability & Trust
• AI and Safety: How Responsible Tech Leaders Build Trustworthy Systems (National Safety Month Special)
• Empowering the Next Generation: Career, Leadership & Resilience Insights (International Youth Day Special Episode)
• Lessons from Leaders: How AI Is Redefining Work and the Human Experience (Labor Day Special Episode)

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Ron Bodkin is a self-described “serial entrepreneur focused on beneficial uses of AI”. Ron founded ChainML in April 2022 to make it easier to integrate AI models into applications. The AI we know today is immature in so many ways and many of them relate to how crude the tooling is for traditional developers building AI-first features. 

The ChainML protocol is a cost-efficient, decentralized network built for compute-intensive applications running on blockchain technology. Prior to founding ChainML Ron had a distinguished entrepreneurial career having founded Think Big Analytics before it was eventually acquired by Teradata after which he spent three years in applied AI at Google. Ron is also an active investor and advisor and has degrees in Computer Science from McGill and MIT.

Listen and learn...

1. What led Ron to focus on how AI can have a positive impact on the world
2. Why Hinton's right when he says "we've invented a superior form of learning"
3. Where the current toolstack for building LLM apps is incredibly immature
4. How to control the cost and performance of LLM apps
5. Why human brains are inefficient
6. Why the "effective cost of computing" is being reduced by 50% every year
7. How we may get to AGI within 20 years
8. Why proprietary datasets and commercial issues will slow down AI innovation
9. The right way to regulate AI

References in this episode...

• Meredith Broussard, professor and author, on AI and the Future of Work
• Attorney relies on court cases made up by ChatGPT
• The Microsoft Sparks of AGI paper

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Trent Fitz is the Chief Product Officer at Zenoss after having spent two decades in product and marketing leadership roles at companies like Trustwave and SailPoint.

Trent owns product strategy and marketing at one of the pioneers in the space. Zenoss was founded in 2005 and has continued to reinvent itself. With the advent of generative AI, it’s more relevant than ever.

We’ve explored the topics of service assurance and monitoring in the past with great guests like Colin Fletcher who coined the term AIOps while at Gartner and Gareth Rushgrove from Snyk who publishes the popular DevOps Weekly newsletter.

The field of monitoring is evolving rapidly as new architecture patterns emerge and the data exhaust they generate continues to increase. 

Listen and learn...

1. Trent's history lesson in system monitoring
2. The role of AI in monitoring and operations
3. Trent's perspective on the evolution of monitoring tool sprawl
4. What is AIOps vs. observability, monitoring, or event management
5. How service-centric monitoring is essential for dynamic apps based on microservices
6. The difference between generation one and two AIOps
7. Where are manual rules insufficient and real AI is needed to monitor apps
8. How LLMs are being used to improve observability
9. Why Big Cloud won't own monitoring of cloud-native apps
10. Will there be a time when AI will replace DevOps engineers?

References in this episode...

• Colin Fletcher from Gartner on AI and the Future of Work
• Gareth Rushgrove from Snyk on AI and the Future of Work
• Charity Majors on AI and the Future of Work

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Today's guest is one of the pioneers in generative AI having spent nine years at Google Research building teams that developed breakthrough technologies that led to innovations like the transformer architecture behind ChatGPT.

Jad Tarifi co-founded Integral AI in 2021 after a distinguished career in AI roles as a researcher and leader. He received his PhD in Computer Science and AI from the University of Florida and did his undergrad at the University of Waterloo.

Thanks to great former guest and friend of the podcast Hina Dixit from Samsung NEXT for the intro to Jad.

Listen and learn: 

1. Can machines learn common sense? Do humans have common sense? 
2. Why Integral AI is providing a “base model for the world” 
3. Can machines ever learn as quickly as humans? 
4. How to improve the efficiency of LLMs with better algorithms 
5. Why the current transformer architecture is poorly designed for next word prediction 
6. How to use AI and robotics to create “magic wands” and “crystal balls” 
7. How to use AI to do “science at scale” 
8. What are the ethical implications of bots that can change the human life span 
9. How AGI is related to objective morality 
10. Jad’s four tenets of a new definition of “freedom” 

References in this episode… 

• Integral.ai 
• Blake Lemoine and the “sentience” debate
• Podcastle, generative AI for podcasts (a technology nobody needs)